Dune (Dune, #1)

by Frank Herbert

This Hugo and Nebula Award winner is widely to be considered the most prescient SF novel ever. It tells the sweeping tale of a desert planet called Arrakis, the focus of an intricate power struggle in a byzantine interstellar empire. Arrakis is the sole source of Melange, the "spice of spices." Melange is necessary for interstellar travel and grants psychic powers and longevity, so whoever controls it wields great influence. The troubles begin when stewardship of Arrakis is transferred by the Emperor from the Harkonnen Noble House to House Atreides. The Harkonnens don't want to give up their privileges, however, and through sabotage and treachery they cast young Duke Paul Atreides out into the planet's harsh environment to die. There he falls in with the Fremen, a tribe of desert dwellers who become the basis of the army with which he will reclaim what's rightfully his. Paul Atreides, though, is far more than just a usurped duke. He might be the end product of a very long-term genetic experiment designed to breed a super human; he might be a messiah. His struggle is at the center of a nexus of powerful people and events, and the repercussions will be felt throughout the Imperium.

• ISBN10: 0340839937
• ISBN13: 9780340839935
• Publish Date: 5 June 2006 (first published 1 December 1965)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 7 December 2012
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
• Imprint: Hodder Paperback
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 608
• Language: English

Reviews

[thepunktheory]

Full review on my blog!


I am a bit torn on the book. First of all, it took me a month to read. If I really like a book, I usually gobble it up within a few days at the most. The thing is, I wanted to like Dune but I just had a hard time getting into it. I already identified one problem that definitely contributed to that. See, I read this on my e-reader. However, the novel comes with a rather substantial appendix. An appendix that is necessary, considering how many new terms the author came up with. But going through the story on an e-reader meant that I didn’t flick back and forth as that’s just annoying, so the appendix was pretty much lost on me, which also means that I was a bit lost reading the book. That means, if you want to read Dune, get yourself an actual copy instead of a digital version, it’ll make the reading experience a lot more enjoyable.

The story is split in three parts with the first essentially being a very long prologue. Herbert spends a decent amount on the world-building and situating the reader in the story. Although it was necessary, I still wanted it to be shorter so we could get on with the story. Considering that technically I desperately needed all the explanation I could get since I didn’t check out the appendix, this is a bit of contradiction, but here we are.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed Herbert’s story. I enjoyed his world and his characters but I just wanted him to get on with everything a bit faster. That’s true for the entire book and not just the first part.

The third part is situated after a quite substantial time jump which I found quite irritating. At first I wasn’t sure what had happened. You know, it could have just been a vision Paul was having, so it took me a chapter or two to figure out where we are timewise. I’m not quite sure whether I want the third part to be in the same book with parts 1 and 2. To have it as its own part it may be too short but somehow in my brain I felt a disconnect.

[alessio]

Recensione pubblicata originariamente sul mio blog Arte della Lettura
Dune è uno di quei libri che ho comprato anni fa, ma che non avevo ancora letto. Deciso a ridurre i libri arretrati - e per farci un episodio del Podcast - l'ho finalmente letto e, alla fine, ho capito perché tanti ne parlano così bene.

Trama

La trama è inizialmente semplice, ma col passare delle pagine si evolve sempre più, trasformandosi ed evolvendosi. Grazie alla numerosa presenza di colpi di scena e di elementi e fatti a noi ignoti non succede mai che il libro rallenti o che inizi a diventare noioso.

Le uniche parti un po' lente sono le descrizioni delle visioni del protagonista, un po' troppo prolisse per i miei gusti.

Personaggi

Dune è ricco di personaggi strani e unici. Vi sono i Mentat, uomini con capacità di calcolo e intuizione così elevate da essere fondamentali al fianco di ogni persona potente. Molte donne potenti sono invece appartenenti alla scuola Bene Gesserit, il cui scopo è quello di creare un uomo semi-dio, il Kwisatz Haderach, tramite delle calcolate gravidanze volte a unire i migliori DNA presenti.

I selvaggi abitanti del deserto, i Fremen, hanno invece una cultura totalmente differente che ci verrà rivelata man mano che proseguiremo nella lettura. Tutto questo alone di mistero mi ha appassionato moltissimo e mi ha fatto leggere Dune con ancora più fervore.

Worldbuilding

Il worldbuilding di Dune è spettacolare, uno dei migliori che abbia mai letto. Frank Herbert riesce a unire perfettamente trama e descrizioni, senza rendere quest'ultime noiose e prolisse, cosa non facile quando si crea un'universo come quello presente in Dune.

Ho apprezzato molto il fatto che inizialmente ci viene solo detto l'essenziale per non essere totalmente spaesati e che il resto delle informazioni ci viene dato con piccoli indizi sparsi o proseguendo la lettura.

Inoltre, per gli interessati a fine libro ci sono una serie di appendici che entrano maggiormente nel dettaglio di certi elementi presenti nel libro.

Edizione

Le edizioni di Dune in Italia meritano la loro sezione a parte. Attualmente l'editore italiano di tutta la serie di Dune è Fanucci e il libro che io stesso ho letto è della Fanucci, ma l'edizione precedente (quella nell'immagine). Questo libro l'ho pagato dieci euro, un prezzo onesto per la qualità della carta e dell'edizione in generale, molto mediocre ma comunque leggibile (seppur con qualche errore).

Ad oggi però la Fanucci ha deciso di ristampare tutta la serie di Dune con delle nuove copertine, probabilmente in concomitanza con l'uscita del settimo libro. Queste nuove copertine sono oscene, con una quantità di testo tale da farle sembrare cartelloni pubblicitari, e oltretutto il prezzo è stato aumentato a 20 euro, pur rimanendo a copertina flessibile.

Tutto questo per consigliarvi di leggerlo in inglese, se ne avete la possibilità, oppure di recuperare le edizioni della Sperling & Kupfer, che mi sono state consigliate da molte persone.

Conclusioni

Un ottimo libro, adesso dovrò recuperare il resto della serie.
Altre recensioni sul mio blog Arte della Lettura

[chetofuor]

I've seen the Truth and I now understand the Hype.

[inlibrisveritas]

Finally finished!! Full RTC!

[gmcgregor]

Dune drops you right into the story without easing you in with world-building before the plot picks up, which I personally found alienating and made it hard for me to get into it from the beginning. It's the story of a young nobleman, Paul Atrides, whose family is entangled in interplanetary intrigue. The Atrides family is given control of a planet called Dune, notable for being the sole source of a precious substance, the spice melange, which allows people to tap into enhanced mental abilities. When the Atrides are betrayed by their enemies, the Harkonnens, the Duke Leto dies but his consort Jessica and son Paul escape into the desert planet, where Paul (the result of a breeding program by a religious/philosphical/political sect) taps into extraordinary abilities and becomes a religious icon among the native population. Of course, he has vengeance to bring upon the Harokkens and a final battle for power between the families looms.

Having read Joseph Campbell's Hero With A Thousand Faces, it was pretty easy to recognize Paul's story as the Hero's Journey. There's a reason this particular narrative is so popular across time and cultures: when done well, it's really compelling. Was this done well? Not especially, but it wasn't bad or even mediocre. It just didn't do a lot for me, personally. Like I said, it took me a while to get into it and it's kind of a space opera...it starts at like a 7 in intensity and waxes and wanes from there, but it's high drama throughout. I'd have liked a chance to warm up to and get emotionally invested in the characters before they started being put in peril. And on a shallow note about the characters, it bothered me that some of them had fairly standard-issue names: Jessica, Paul, Duncan, even Leto. Then there are some named Thufir, Gurney, and Irulan. I tend to feel like an author should either "go there" with mostly unusual naming patterns or not, but the in-between doesn't really work.

Once I got about a quarter of the way into it, I got a feel for the world and the novel as a whole and I enjoyed it more, but at the end of the day it wasn't really for me. Assuming for the sake of argument a continuum from entirely character-driven stories to entirely plot-driven stories, I tend to prefer things on the character side and I'd slot Dune on the plot side. I'm a big movie-watcher when I'm not reading, and there are plenty of movies that I've seen that I recognize are high quality, but that I don't really like. This is the same kind of deal...I can understand why it's been so popular and sold so well, but I don't know that I'd read it again or recommend it to anyone.

[Mercy]

Una historia genial. Con una gama de variopintos personajes. Y están muy bien desarrollados. Viajes interestelares, venganza, amor, odio, guerras, gusanos gigantes, psicología y mucho más.
Un poco densa algunos momentos, además que el protagonista no es tan de mi agrado, aunque tampoco cae mal y es que el resto recompensa :')

[adastra]

Beautiful writing style and a very interesting story, though I felt that some of the chapters in between dragged a bit on..

[ladygrey]

This is a masterpiece of science fiction. Delightfully complex and layered, full of political and religious intrigue in the midst of an incredibly full formed universe.

There are parts, I noticed the second time I read it, where he delves into a great deal of pedantic information. In most books I would consider this a flaw, but in [b:Dune|234225|Dune (Dune Chronicles, #1)|Frank Herbert|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1434908555s/234225.jpg|3634639] it only makes the world more real to be sitting in a staff conference and have them discuss the everydayness of equipment and troops. And [a:Frank Herbert|58|Frank Herbert|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1168661521p2/58.jpg]'s story is so well formed it never stands out as boring or useless information; it's folded into and a part of the story.

Herbert laces so many interesting and powerful themes through the story:

- political intrigues and the manipulations of power, especially how the underestimated wield the real power

- the role of women in the society, how they were overtly the "lesser" but subversively much more powerful and more in control of the tides of destiny than the men.

- the sacrifice of the self for a larger goal, about surrendering to the machinations of power. This theme comes into play even more in Children of Dune but is still present in Paul and the choices he makes for survival and for revenge

- and about love that is real and love that is subjugated to power and love that is unfulfilled. Herbert isn't a exceptionally emotional writer, but he alludes to all of these in engaging ways.

I especially love his sense of language. The words he created are exotic and this exceptional blend of vowels and consonants.

My favorite thing, though is how complex the whole thing is. The politics of intrigue upon intrigue, loyalties tested and divided and reformed, the religion harnessed and shaped; all of which are only possible because his characters are so fully and deeply formed make [b:Dune|234225|Dune (Dune Chronicles, #1)|Frank Herbert|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1434908555s/234225.jpg|3634639] a vibrant and seemingly real world.

"She asked me to tell her what it is to rule," Paul said. "And I said that one commands. And she said I had some unlearning to do."
She hit a mark there right enough, Hawat thought. He nodded for Paul to continue.
"She said a ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel."

[empressbrooke]

I've never given a book 5 stars instantly upon finishing it. My 5-star favorites became favorites after they had time to stick around in my mind for a year or so while my devotion to them grew. It's entirely possible Dune will join them in the future, but right now it's hard to tell. If I could, I would give it 4.5 for now.

Dune has the qualities that a lot of my favorites have. It's an epic, sprawling story with its own vocabulary, a fully-realized world and deep characters. Like a lot of books with these characteristics, the first few chapters are difficult to absorb. I had to go back and reread them a few times as I learned more and had to remind myself to be patient.

Patience is also required for the rest of the book, since it's not a quick read. I can normally knock out a book in a day or two, but Dune required much more time than I expected. The perspective changes from character to character without any warning; while the book is written well enough that it's not confusing, it definitely requires close attention.

Now there's the question of whether or not to read the sequels. They don't seem to be very well-liked by Dune fans, although the same thing could be said about Ender's Game's sequels, which I really enjoyed.